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But what’s so wrong with an attempt to level the playing field so the beaux arts are not reserved for tourists and the beautiful people living in the historic heart of national capitals?

It’s not like the Louvre, which is, after all, the world’s biggest art museum, has any shortage of world-class pieces. Statistics lovers know it has at least 35,000 works in its vast collection.

Surely it can spare a few masterpieces such as Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People or Perugino’s St Sebastian. Not to mention works by Ingres and Goya or architectural jewels of the Roman era.

Despite Brit bleatings, the Louvre’s “strength is not being undermined" by its opening of an outpost in Lens.

On the contrary.

The Western artistic canon needs to move around a bit, not become stuck to a wall in one vast, hallowed palace transformed into gallery space. It was almost pathetic when The Independent wailed that “sadly, the Mona Lisa, which is too fragile to move, will not be catching the TGV [fast train] from the Gare du Nord".

Speaking this week on French radio RFI, Louvre curator Agnes Bos said the works transferred to Lens had not been selected because they had been “hidden away in the caverns".

More than 200 world-class paintings by Fragonard, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Botticelli and others had been chosen even if “the heart skips a beat to see these particular works leave Paris" and partly because they can also be given “a breath of fresh air".

It’s not as if the Louvre is “breaking up a collection that is one of the wonders of the world".

Many works will be rotating through the museum, which will also host ongoing temporary exhibitions such as the current wonder on loan from the Paris Louvre, Da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.

Then there is the choice of this seemingly blighted north-western corner of the country.

For all its disadvantages – an unemployment rate of 60 per cent and a small population which, as the press never ceases to note, is outnumbered by the seats in its soccer stadium – Lens sits at the crossroads of western Europe.

It is about 100 kilometres from the Channel tunnel, half an hour’s drive from Lille, where super-fast TGV trains meet from around Europe, a brief commute to Brussels, and several hours by train from Amsterdam.

Yet the British seem positively freaked out that the ultimate in world museums is opening a branch “on its doorstep".

The Independent chimed in on a sceptical note, asking: “The Louvre takes art out of Paris, but will the crowds follow?"

An AP report suggests locals are sniffing at their former coalmine transformed into art.

In reality there is much proud local and regional enthusiasm for the new cultural mecca.

The nay-sayers are already being proved wrong.

Last weekend’s non-stop free pre-opening attracted 36,000 visitors, including a hardcore of about 2000 art fans who filled the gallery’s halls and pavilions after midnight.

The Louvre had clearly attracted popular attention by choosing one of its best-known works in Delacroix’s iconic 1830 homage to the revolutionary spirit featuring a bare-breasted woman, Liberty Leading the People, to headline the opening promotion.

“Tous a Lens" (“Everybody to Lens") was the caption on large poster reproductions of the painting in metro and billboard advertisements blanketing France.

The Louvre must be hoping to emulate the unforeseen success of the Centre Pompidou Metz, the outpost of Paris’s modern art museum in eastern France. More than 500,000 people visited the gallery last year, making it one of the most popular cultural attractions in the country.

In Bilbao in northern Spain, the Guggenheim has revitalised a once-thriving industrial town.

Louvre Lens’s architectural style, devised by Japanese firm SANAA to complement the site’s former coalmine, is much more subtle. Some have compared it to a series of hangars.

Yet the public appetite for the new Louvre site is apparent even in the midst of a bitterly cold winter.

For all its pessimism over seeming national decline, France has never abandoned its commitment to renewing its cultural heritage. Indeed it continues to innovate boldly, and we could do well to emulate the French spirit in Australia.

If only La douce France (“sweet France") could manage its millions of jobless as well, and apply the same creative spirit to revitalising its economy.